in in a black cloak, was standing
in the street only a foot or two beyond reach of the questing spearhead.

"Fear not," said the harsh voice. "It is I--Heglar, nobleman of Ammad. I
am here to hold an audience with the noble Vokal. At his own invitation.
Here." He held out his hand from under the cloak and something gleamed
from the center of his palm in the faint light. "Examine this by the
rays from yonder lantern."

Cautiously, his heavy spear ready in his right hand, Otar took the
object and backed away until he could see it clearly. His careful
maneuvering was in line with orders, for attempts at assassination were
fairly common among Ammad's nobles in their ceaseless efforts for power
second only to Jaltor himself, king of all Ammad.

A single glance was all Otar needed. It was Vokal's personal talisman: a
small square of gold bearing on one side a peculiar design cut in the
soft metal. No humblest warrior in all Vokal's vast retinue who did not
know that design and his duties when faced with it.

He returned the talisman to the man who called himself Heglar and
stepped back, bringing his spear sharply to a saluting position. "You
may pass, noble Heglar. This path will bring you to a side door of
Vokal's palace. The guard there will see to it that you are taken to
him."

* * * * *

Vokal stood on a small balcony of stone outside his private apartment on
the fourth level of his huge, many-roomed palace. He was a tall slender
graceful man in his early fifties, with a narrow face, small cameo-sharp
features and a languid almost dreamy quality in his movements and
expression. Prematurely gray hair waved back from a brow of classical
perfection, and the hand he lifted to smooth that hair was narrow and
long fingered and beautifully kept. He was wearing the knee-length tunic
common to all men and women of Ammad, but his was of a better weave, its
belt of the same material was a full two inches wider and trimmed with
the purple of Ammadian royalty.

From this elevated position he was able to look out over the northern
section of the city of Ammad--a vast orderly array of box-like stone
buildings, some gray and some white, rising one to three floors above
the streets. Fully five miles from where Vokal stood was the northern
section of the great gray wall of stone encircling the city, and the
buildings became smaller and simpler in design the nearer they were to
that wall.

A man's p